I know when to use sein and when to use haben for the present perfect. My muscle memory doesn't always agree with me on that point, though, which results in my starting a lot of sentences with ich habe, and then realising that I should have said ich bin. Starting anew is awkward, and I don't want it to look like I don't know the difference.

Until I've taught my subconscious to use the right auxiliary verb: Are there other verbs that can be used to save the following sentences, resulting in approximately the same meaning?

"Ich habe.. äh .. ich bin in der Stadt gewesen." Find someone to teach you to properly pronounce the "äh". This is not a joke. In France, someone taught me to make a proper "euh" instead when I break a French sentence.
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PhiraMay 30 '11 at 15:52

"I know when to use sein and when to use haben for the present perfect." Really? Which of the following do you think is correct, then: - "Er hat dort gestanden." - "Er ist dort gestanden." Correct answer is, of course: it depends on where in Germany you are.
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IngoSep 8 '11 at 13:59

As deceze already wrote, it's hard to keep the exact original sense of your phrase. A motion stays a motion and generally requires sein as Hilfsverb. And I also agree that there's absolutely no problem with starting a sentence again. It happens to native speakers as well.

But you can't really do that without changing the meaning of the sentence in many cases.

German is very rigid in its grammar, if you start a sentence in a certain way you're basically bound to continue it in a certain limited number of ways. There's no real way to get around it. This happens to natives as well though and it's not too unusual to sometimes start a sentence over if you realize you wanted to say something else halfway through.

I think your suggestion for the first example is great. If there is no general solution, I'm looking for such solutions to these specific examples.
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TimMay 27 '11 at 7:17

@Tim It really doesn't mean the same as what you want to say though, depending on the situation the conversation will take a completely different turn because of it. "Ja? Wo sind sie denn überall hingefahren?" - "Äh... nein, wir waren nur in unserem Frankfurter Büro..." It might get even worse: Ich habe... einen Spaziergang in der Stadt gemacht. That's completely different from "Ich bin in der Stadt gewesen." It's not really a good substitute for saying what you meant to. ;-)
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decezeMay 27 '11 at 7:23

If I have to make some compromises to save my face, I will :)
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TimMay 27 '11 at 7:26

5

I think it's actually important to correct yourself. Trying to wiggle your way through won't improve your German the way correction will. I'd be more impressed by a non-native who can correct himself on the spot instead of stumbling through a conversation, even if it slows the conversation down a bit. :)
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decezeMay 27 '11 at 7:27

2

BTW, Japanese is an awesome sentence-bender language. You can just keep tagging on stuff at the end of a sentence until you run out of breathing air. Maybe you want to try that instead... ;o)
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decezeMay 27 '11 at 7:30

Just start the sentence anew. That’s not really a problem, it happens to me all the time (native speaker). Usually, trying to bend a sentence around just makes it awkward and harder to understand. And although people try it again and again (me included) it almost never makes sense.